Children suffer most in Naxalite-Salva Judum crossfire: Report

NEW DELHI: Being deprived of education and health facilities has made children the worst sufferers of Salva Judum, a report by the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has said.

A team led by NCPCR chairperson Shanta Sinha, former chief election commissioner J M Lyngdoh and Venkat Reddy of M V Foundation recently visited Dantewada in Chhattisgarh and Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. They reported that caught in the crossfire between state-backed Salva Judum and Naxalites, 30,000 people from South Bastar had migrated to Khammam district after trudging through thick forests for days.

The team found that neglect of the region by Chhattisgarh and AP governments was contributing to "continuing poverty, ill health and despair" of internally displaced people (IDP).

Not only are the IDPs facing continuous repression by the forest department, which has been burning their settlements, the team also found that deprivation of work in AP had resulted in adults working as coolies.

They were being denied work under NREGA and not provided PDS grain. Also, there was no estimate of the number of IDPs.

All this had a direct impact on children, most of whom had to flee.

"In AP, they are being denied admission as they have no school certificates and also because they are unfamiliar with Telugu as a medium of instruction," the report said, adding that even facilities under Integrated Child Development Scheme to children aged 0-6 were being denied. The team found that all of them wanted to return to Chhattisgarh.

In Dantewada, the NCPCR team found victims of violence by both Naxalites and Salva Judum activists. Many complained that the Naxalites did not allow development work, had disallowed visits from doctors and teachers to villages and had taken away children for training. Victims of Salva Judum blamed its activists for ensuring that no one stayed back in the villages. The report said houses and crops of those not keen to join Salva Judum camps were burned.

"Insistence by Salva Judum volunteers to showcase children as victims of Naxal violence raises concerns for their return to normalcy. This can cause damage to children's psyche," the report said.

The NCPCR has recommended setting up of Child Rights Cell in Dantewada and Khammam, training of functionaries of all institutions dealing with children and social audit of children's rights by trained people.